


Dark of our dreams

by FiKate



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Dreams, Growing Up, M/M, Nightmares, Psychic Abilities, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 01:03:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/363292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FiKate/pseuds/FiKate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles knows how to control his mind and the minds of others but when he sleeps, he can't exert the same control. Instead the strangeness of dreams takes away the certainty he feels inside his own head. This story looks at how he copes with dreams and nightmares.</p><p>Contains dream and nightmare imagery including references to trench warfare, disorientation, fire, and non-graphic sex.</p><p>Thank you to ashen_key for suggestions and advice in helping this story come together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark of our dreams

_We all dream; we do not understand our dreams, yet we act as if nothing strange goes on in our sleep minds, strange at least by comparison with the logical, purposeful doings of our minds when we are awake._

Erich Fromm

The first time Charles dreamed someone else’s dream, he was five and woke up screaming from a nightmare of the trenches of France. His Nanny comforted him but he didn’t sleep that night and chanted into the darkness, “Only my dreams, only my dreams.”

For a time that seemed to work and he didn’t have other people’s dreams, but one of the servants had a horrible time in the last war, and the nightmares slipped through his defenses. The fear of what he might see as he slept kept him awake and his Nanny worried and gave him hot milk which of course he would drink but still not sleep. His body couldn’t do without sleep, so he’d end up falling asleep around the house during the day but at least no one else was sleeping then. After a week of feeling in a haze, he decided he would figure this out and would craft a wall to keep himself safe from the dreams that came in the dark. Once Nanny had tucked him in, he sat in the dark and imagined building a wall around his bed and said to the darkness, “No one else’s dreams are allowed inside, only mine.”

It worked and as he learned to control his mutation more, the wall become part of his nightly routine. After he said his prayers and he got his good night kiss from his Nanny, he would make sure the wall was up

One of the things Charles liked best about being able to see into people’s minds was that he was never bored. On a day when he was meant to be putting together first aid kits for the Red Cross which was dull work, he let his mind wander. Most of the thoughts he found weren’t that interesting; an inventory, a fantasy that was gross and then he couldn’t find up. All the colors were wrong, too bright and too dull and he couldn’t find up or down or where to put his feet and he cried out as part of the kit he was making fell on his hand and he was back in his own head. He looked around hurriedly but no one had heard him as they were all getting ready for the party, so he had time to catch his breath. That must have been someone’s dream, but it was worse than the nightmares. Thoughts were always a little strange and disjointed but that was horrible. He’d have to be even more careful now and have to figure out how to tell when people were asleep or awake.

The only problem with his wall was he had to be careful of when he slept since it was easy to forget to put the wall up when he wasn’t in the midst of his nighttime habits, but the memory of corpses reaching through the ground meant he watched himself. By the time Raven moved in, he had his pattern down to a fairly smooth process of picturing the wall, thinking his phrase and pulling the wall in on himself. As they grew older and had more time on their own, Raven noticed how he’d always get quiet before he’d go to sleep. By the time they were teenagers, he could do the wall and thought in the space of a few breaths before he slept.

When they were about fifteen and were talking late at night about plans and how the world worked, she asked him, “Why don’t you go right to sleep? You do something and you haven’t told me what it is.”

“Because it’s not interesting and shouldn’t even work,” he said and tried to get back into reading his book.

But she was sitting on his bed and staring at him with her rather penetrating gaze that she used when she wanted to know something or he wasn’t explaining in a way that made sense “That’s not a good enough reason. I know you do it. If you even think about sleeping you close your eyes and do something and I want you to tell me. I’ll take away your book if you don’t.”

She reached for it and he had to move back away from her. “I told you it’s stupid and shouldn’t work, but it’s what I do.” He set his book down on his bedside table away from her and sighed as he said, “I’m telling myself to only have my dreams not anyone else’s. It’s not that logical and I don’t know why it works but if I don’t do it then I end up with other people’s dreams in my head.”

“Your problem is that you think too much and if it works, it doesn’t matter. Honestly, you’re not allowed to call yourself stupid. Since you’re not reading anymore, tell me why Penny was making eyes at you in class.”

He sighed but was glad of the change of conversation and they spent the rest of the time before dinner discussing the politics and gossip of their grade.

 

When he started his studies at Oxford, he would get drawn into questions of psychiatry and the various experiments going on in psychology and neuroscience. The conversations at points were fascinating but often incredibly tiring as they were all attempts to explain what he experienced through his telepathy. He knew that professors wouldn’t accept if he explained that he could hear their thoughts and thus figure out why people did things, which made it frustrating to have data and no way to act on it. When he had the time he would read the newest literature about understanding how the brain and mind functioned as they provided new language for approaching his mutation.

For his work he kept to his genetics, but when the talks moved towards dreams, he would try to catch every conversation and the few lectures as he didn’t understand them. He’d yet to find a better solution for keeping other people’s dreams out than simply willing a wall but he wanted more. There simply had to be reasons and if he knew the reasons then he would be able to control his dreams and maybe look into other people’s dreams when he wanted to. Minds didn’t fully make sense but he at least knew how to approach them, while dreams were another level of complexity. Theories seemed to be divided into two distinct camps, those who trusted to science and medicine, and those that worked more with ideas and the power of the mind to change itself. Some of the more esoteric works would have hints that he found useful and he discovered mediation and found ways to balance the many minds around him. It allowed him to better control his walls but beyond that a language to grasp the multitude of thoughts that were a background to his life and how best to focus on one person or one strand of ideas without being overwhelmed. He’d been practicing and experimenting since he was young, but as a scientist having the words to describe what he did helped immensely.

The main drawback to his studies was he got into the habit of keeping odd hours, but before he considered sleep, he always took the time to guard for dreams. Though it wasn’t always perfect as there was a day not long before he turned in his dissertation proposal when he’d been working far too late. He was editing in the library and had lost track of time as he let his thoughts wander. He wasn’t truly focusing that much on what he heard, it was restful to skim the minds around him until stairs were trying to eat him and he seemed trapped in a maze. There didn’t seem to be a way out and he kept tripping until somewhere he heard a bang and looked around. The section of the library was full of confused students and a young man turned red as he had just knocked over a leaning pile of books. When the harried student looked his way, he managed a smile as that clumsy act had pulled him from a frightening dream.

 

After a long day of training around the house, he sat down with one of his favorite journals but fell asleep in one of the more comfortable chairs in the den. He was in a dream of red fire and the world burning, images of destruction mingled with the fire; a child’s toy, a house, a woman reaching through a window and screaming as the fire consumed her. The heat from the flames around him woke him up and he found Erik sitting across from him in his accustomed seat with a worried look, “Nightmare?”

Erik’s calmness was useful since his heart was going far too fast, that wasn’t his nightmare, “Yes, pour me some Scotch.”

“That bad? I didn’t know you were a man who let dreams bother you.”

Once he’d had a long drink of the Scotch he said, “It wasn’t _my_ dream. I thought I was better at shielding when I slept.”

Erik watched him before speaking again and Charles was too worn from the nightmare to find out why but sat under the sharp gaze as he asked, “Do dreams frighten you?”

“Sometimes. Dreams can be powerful. They show what’s hidden away and I don’t want to see that unless I’m looking.”

“But you weren’t scared of Emma Frost, she upset your balance but didn’t call up this fear.”

Charles wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and took a drink before answering, “She surprised me. I’ve never thought of a combination of mental and psychical power could work in such a way but I wouldn’t say she frightened me. Dreams are something I don’t understand.”

Erik took a sip of his drink and watched Charles before saying so quietly he almost missed it, “I think dreams are where we bury our great fears that revisit us in the darkness. In the daylight, they can be turned into anger and other things but at night, they find us. What do you hide under all that calmness, Charles?”

Before he could begin to figure out how to answer that question, Moira and Hank came in from one door discussing flying with Raven rolling her eyes behind them. Alex came down the stairs yawning and said, “I’m hungry and need a beer.”

In the brief moment before everyone started talking again, Charles stood up and shrugged, “It shouldn’t take long to prepare something.”

He could feel Erik’s gaze on his back and knew he’d have to find an answer but his own fears were something he hid well away.

Much later Charles found himself comfortably dropping off to sleep beside Erik, the day had taken a strange turn for the good. They’d kissed and then had tangled and twisted in Charles’ bed with laughter and confusion. It took them time to figure out each other and he had even tried opening his mind more to Erik and after a few misfires, there was one moment of shared ecstasy. In the darkest hours of the night, Charles woke up sweating from a nightmare that he couldn’t grasp other than the fear. As he lay there, aware of Erik stirring but not waking, he knew what had woken him. What scared him hadn’t changed since he’d been a child, he didn’t want to be alone in his head. A world without others’ thoughts on the edge of his and no other mutants terrified him, and that fear drove him. Not to anger like Erik’s understandable fear of being used and becoming a weapon but to reach out and let every mutant know that they’re not alone. Then silence in his head would only ever happen in his nightmares.


End file.
